Pages

Friday, 16 November 2012

Blood and Chrome - watch episodes 3 & 4

Machinima has posted episodes 3 and 4 of Blood and Chrome. You can watch them below or on the Machinima Prime YouTube Channel. Episode 1 has had 1,773,800 views so far and episode 2, only 517,234. Some high-traffic sites didn't embed both episodes last week, so if you haven't seen ep 2, you should probably catch up first.

And a slight correction: Machinima has released the full schedule for the show, and the final two episodes will be posted on December 7, not November 30, which makes more sense since they are being released in pairs.

David Eick will be answering questions about the show on YouTube any minute now, so if you have an account, you can head over there.

Nerdist has a new interview with Eick. Here is a snippet that probably isn't a surprise to the conspiracists among us (the part about those plans for a B&C TV show not being what they were cracked up to be):

N: What challenges were there in cutting the show down to smaller, webisode-sized segments?
DE: I think that question unfortunately comes from a misinformed place. People have developed a belief that we developed this pilot for SyFy Channel and they passed on it, but then said, “Let’s put it online.” It was actually the opposite. We developed this as an online project, but then SyFy read the script and said, “Let’s keep our options open.”

As the production started coming together, we decided to go back to the original plan because there was a real opportunity to blow the wheels off of the level of quality you would expect from a web-based production. So, when people come to me saying that SyFy passed on Blood & Chrome, I’m like, “What the f@$# are you talking about?” They didn’t pass on it; we simply went back to our original plan of action. It was always going to be a ten-part story and a one hundred minute movie that you could divide into ten-minute bite-sized morsels. We embedded natural cliffhangers and segues within the episodes that lend themselves well to serialization. This has been a part of the plan since the get-go.

When we were thinking about how to crack the digital marketplace with the Battlestar franchise, I just thought about Raiders of the Lost Ark and the world where that came from with these movie serials that you would go and see each week, they would end on a cliffhanger, then you would come back and see the next little installment the following week. You might be able to build something like that if you rushed mission design; military missions are made up of many smaller missions.

And Spoiler TV has the transcript of the conference call he did with Luke Pasqualino last week. A lengthy read, but well worth it. Here is an interesting snippet:

There are a number of little Easter-egging nods to the Battlestar faithful that anyone watching the DVDs or seeing this online will be able to recognize. But I think one of the things that will be less resistance to is to think about, do we [get] Esai Morales who played William Adama's father, to reprise his role in some capacity in a future episode? Do we show some of that conflict and strain between father and son and some of the uniquely kind of contradictory impulses that a mob lifestyle and military lifestyle sort of present?

That's all really rich storytelling—top soil for us—to pursue if we get the chance to go forward.

The new old faces making an appearance in the new episodes are Jill Teed (Col. Patel on Caprica, Sgt. Hadrian on BSG) and Ty Olsson (Capt. Kelly on BSG).

The episodes:

Episode 3

Reeling from the discovery of the ruins of Battlestar Archeron, Adama (Luke Pasqualino) and Coker’s (Ben Cotton) small Raptor is nearly outmatched when they engage with three enemy Raiders. More secrets are revealed when the crew makes a shocking discovery deep in Cylon space.

Episode 4

Adama and Coker prepare for a dangerous mission above the Cylon occupied planet Djerba. Coker reunites with an old friend (Sebastian Spence) and reveals startling news.